


what force could stop me?

by sure sure (getoffmysheets)



Series: Red in Tooth and Claw [7]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Daemon Settling, Daemons, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-04 15:21:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21199832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/getoffmysheets/pseuds/sure%20sure
Summary: She knows the weight of what she asks for, now more than ever. It doesn't make her less sure of her answer. "It's worth it."





	what force could stop me?

It isn’t anything in the dreams. There’s no sign that tells El she needs to hurry. It’s…it’s just a feeling.

“We’re running out of time,” Brigantia whispers in her ear, curled on her shoulder as a mink, the silky fur brushing El’s neck.

“I know,” she murmurs back. It was already August, and Joyce didn’t want to stay in Hawkins anymore. The failure of the mall had saved the store, but losing Hopper beneath it had poisoned any desire she had to stay anymore.

She ran a hand along Brigantia’s dark brown fur. Touching her still doesn’t feel quite right – it’s not that it’s bad or wrong, but there’s something slightly off about the sensation. She’s used to feeling a connection on the other side of the touch, a link to something beyond herself.

Every child first knows themselves and then learns others. Every child but El.

She turns over on the bed, slow tears making their way down her face. Brigantia makes a high-pitched squeak at her distress, burrowing against her breast, nearer to her heart. “I miss Andy.” Opens her eyes to meet Brigantia’s gaze. “I’m sorry.”

It feels disloyal, to be able to touch her daemon, to have her soul with her at last, and it doesn’t feel as comfortable as falling asleep against Andy’s back. Jim wasn’t good at _telling_ Eleven that she was loved, but he’d had his ways. “I do, too,” she confesses, giving her a brief image of hugging Andy in the lift as she nuzzles El’s fingers. “It’s okay.”

Her early childhood has isolated Eleven from Brigantia, for at least the entirety of their memories. But by comforting her so often with Andy and Sindri, Hopper and Joyce have unintentionally trained El into being more comfortable with someone else’s daemon than she is with her own.

El doesn’t want to ask to hold Sindri right now. Joyce has enough of her own pain and grief over losing Hopper without borrowing some of hers, too. Sometimes…sometimes Steve lets her touch Artie, but El doesn’t like to do that, either. Her grief dims all of Steve’s smiles and he lets El touch them anyway. And holding Artie is both similar to holding onto Andy and entirely different in a way that leaves El dissatisfied and often even sadder than before.

Artie is always fluffy and warm, and Steve blankets them in a steady, loving calmness that soothes her nerves. But even so, El knows that they are simply a substitution for the presence she longs for.

Brigantia says, “We’ll need Steve and Artemis if we’re going to bring him back.”

“Yes,” Eleven agrees.

“Joyce won’t like it,” she points out. It’s more of an observation than anything else. They both know it won’t deter either of them. “Too dangerous.”

“Won’t tell.”

“Friends don’t lie,” Brigantia says softly, and El curls into a tighter ball on top of the covers.

“Not ‘friend’,” she say finally, knowing that she doesn’t have to explain herself to Brigantia.

Joyce is more than ‘friend’. _More_, Eleven thinks guiltily, _more than ‘Mama’_. She doesn’t have a word for that. Not one she feels brave enough to use yet. She wishes she’d had the courage to use her word for Hopper. It was so much more than ‘friend’, or ‘Jim’, and nicer than ‘Papa’ could ever be.

Brigantia nips at her thumb, bringing El out of her depressing thoughts. “Can’t hide anymore,” she reminds her. “Have to help you.”

“Weren’t hiding,” she said, though it was only half-true. “_Private_.”

Nancy taught her that one. Sometimes, it was okay to keep a secret from friends, because sometimes you had things that were special, things that were yours and only yours. That was ‘_private’_.

Brigantia’s preferred form was private.

Hopper never even told El not to show anyone else. But when he held Brigantia, that first time, they could feel his fear, feel his worry. He worried that someone would see the daemon living beneath the face of a little girl, that they would single Eleven out and take them away from him. That they would hurt her. That they would lock her away again. There was nothing that scared him more.

So, the others thought that her favorite form was the beagle. Until the flayed Billy had attacked them in the sauna and Brigantia had become a massive wolf with jaws large enough to quell even Freyja, Lucas and Dustin just assumed that El had already settled that way.

(Will and Nanna knew that she wasn’t settled yet. It was a bit difficult for Will to explain to someone else, but he told El that the air around Brigantia ‘buzzed’, and that only happened for her and Erica’s daemon, Zephyr. They used to feel it around Max’s daemon Pallas, too, but it stopped the day of Billy’s funeral. Pal has been a caracal ever since.)

The others can help her reach the gate, but Eleven can’t keep the portal itself open without Brigantia’s help, and they will not be able to hide any longer.

“Bring Steve with how?” El asks aloud, curving one of her arms around the mink’s body.

Brigantia took the time to think about that. “Will go anyway,” she decides at last, and El nods. Steve couldn’t stop her and he knew that. He also knew that she would do it with or without his help – which is precisely why he would agree to go with her. “Sleep now?”

Eleven closes her eyes, hands curved gently around the long body of the mink.

Her mind travels both far and very near. To a place both familiar and painfully alien. Dead, and living beyond reason.

Her body is different here. She feels heavier. More powerful? No, not _more_ powerful. It’s just that her power is different here. It sits in her arms and legs and down the column of her spine in this place, instead of resting in her chest and at the tips of her fingers.

Eleven runs. Her heart is huge, her lungs enormous. They hurt fiercely. Her mouth moves without her conscious permission, and a foreign rumble emerges when she speaks. “Andraste.”

And the dog at El’s feet looks up at her, the beloved and familiar face gazing up at her with Andy’s loving, solemn amber eyes. Andy nudges at her thigh, which is much higher than it used to be. “We can make it, Jim.”

\---

“This is absolutely insane,” Steve whispers, staring around the dusty room where all of the town’s worst miseries had begun. This was the place that El was raised in, the place where the doorway between Hawkins and the Upside Down was first created.

“Yes,” Artie agrees quietly, but they have come anyway, because Steve is a good and brave man and they would not let Eleven come alone.

He’d only had one stipulation. He wanted back-up.

“Ready to go?” Mithra murmurs in his ear, gripping onto Steve’s shoulder.

"Ready as I'll ever be."

Steve glances over at Nancy, who gives him a nod, Celestis perched on her shoulder. His white feathers are a sharp contrast to her dark hair and even darker jacket. It’s August in Hawkins, but where they’re going, it’s going to be a lot colder.

He was not going into the Upside Down with only himself, Artie, and a fourteen-year-old psychic. Nancy and Jonathan were the only people left who had any practical experience with physically going there other than Joyce. Robin wasn’t going to let him do this alone, but she was also practical enough and smart enough to know that she couldn’t help within the Upside Down.

Mithra wasn’t a good combat choice for something the size of a Demogorgon or even a Demodog and Robin didn’t have any fighting experience.

“This is _Cinephile_ to the _New Kids_,” Robin says into the radio, checking their connection. “Come in _New Kids_.”

“This is the _New Kids_ to _Cinephile_,” Dustin answers immediately. Then Mike, grouchy as ever, reminds “This is a check-in for all radio units. _Sentinel_?”

Steve rolls his eyes, but answers anyway. The names are stupid, but the mechanical checks are important and he knows that. Eleven answers for them while he gets ready. “_Sentinel_ to _New Kids_, over.”

“_Bonnie and Clyde_?” Will asks, the hint of a cheeky smile in his voice.

Jonathan’s mouth twitches as he pauses the process of loading a backpack with supplies. “This is _Bonnie and Clyde_ to _New Kids_, over.”

Lucas says, “_Mad Max_?”

Max has to whisper, afraid of being overheard by Susan and Neil. “_Mad Max_ to _New Kids_, over.”

The three adults and Eleven stand in front of the cracked wall, staring at the place where the gate would be opened. "Alright," Jonathan says lightly, handing the walkie talkie to Nancy for a moment while he flips the backpack straps over his shoulders. "Anybody have to use the bathroom before we go?"

Steve's face cracks into a smile. Time and distance from his relationship with Nancy have given him a sincere appreciation for Jonathan's quiet charm when he isn't feeling socially pressured. He swirls the bat between his hands, rocking on the balls of his feet. "Well, you know you never need to go until you leave the house!"

"If you pee your pants in there, I'm gonna hold onto that _forever_." Robin informs him with glee.

"Thanks, Rob," he says dryly. "I knew I could count on you."

She gives him a mock salute before turning to Eleven. "Alright, kiddo. This is your show. Ready?"

El glances at her daemon, resting on her shoulder as a pied butcher-bird up till now. "Not quite," she confesses. "I need Brigantia to keep the gate open."

"Um, okay," Robin says, puzzled but not alarmed. Yet. "Uh, start whenever you're ready."

Brigantia leaps from her perch, landing on the ground as a she-wolf larger then El herself. "I won't be able to change back again," she warns her. "If I go back to that, I'll never change again, El."

Eleven knows. They can feel the potential of it coiled within their very bones. She has been delaying the destiny that waits for her the moment she and Brigantia first touched hands. She knows the weight of what she asks for, now more than ever. But that doesn't make her less sure of her answer. "It's worth it."

So the she-wolf curls to the floor, fur disappearing as her body mass decreases, pink skin appearing all along her back. El pulls out the dress hidden in her pack, concealing the nakedness that is her own nakedness, even as Brigantia grows beyond her own size.

Nancy whispers "oh my god" and Celestis flaps his wings frantically with agitation. Beside Steve, Artemis whines, ears dropped down as she turns manic circles. Steve has lowered the bat, hands trembling as Brigantia stands in her borrowed dress, El's grown up face looking back at them.

"Eleven," Jonathan croaks, staring at her in horror. "Eleven, are you okay?"

Robin's hands flutter like Mithra's wings, touching lightly at El's elbows, her shoulders. As though she thinks El will break. "This-this is-she's-"

"It's okay," she says, gently grabbing and squeezing her fingers. Answering Jonathan's question, she adds "I'm really okay."

_A daemon which persists in mimicking a human being is often a sign of mental distress in the daemon's real human, often leading to suicidal behavior between the two_. She remembers reading that, once.

Brigantia says "I'm sorry, El. I'm sorry I can't hide better for you."

Eleven hugs her, though she dwarfs her by a few inches now. "This is who we are, even if it's scary. And we don't 'hide'."

"Guys," Max says softly, the radios crackling awake. "_Mad Max_ to Party - is everything okay? Have they left yet?"

Steve lifts his radio and says faintly _"Sentinel_ to Party. Everything's...no, we haven't left yet." He swallows. "We'll-we'll tell you later."

Impatiently, Mike says "_New Kids_ to _Sentinel._ Tell us now."

**"No,"** Steve says with surprising force, without looking away from El.

She looks back at him solemnly. "You don't have to go. I know...I understand if you don't want to go. With me."

“_Look – he doesn’t even know this girl. And if he _did_ know her – like, _really_ know her – I don’t think h-he’d even wanna be her friend_._”_

He drops the bat to the floor with a hideous clatter. Taking her small face in his hands, Steve says “Promise me. Swear on – swear on Hopper that you feel okay. That you’re – you aren’t-”

“I swear,” El says, closing her eyes and leaning into the warmth of his palms. “I swear on my dad, this is how we’re supposed to be, Steve.”

Letting out a shaky breath, he lets her go, hands relaxing back at his sides. He retrieves the bat and Artie begins licking apologetically at Brigantia’s fingers. “Okay. Okay. Whenever you’re ready, El.”

She stands aside to let Brigantia do her work, her slightly larger frame shifting, knees apart and arms up. A yellow-orange light spills through as the liminal fibers between worlds separate, opening a doorway into the Upside Down. Jonathan hands El a handkerchief as her nose begins to bleed, though Brigantia herself appears unfazed.

“This is _Cinephile._ The gate is up. Party departing in three…two…one…”

They step through, Steve and El first. Jonathan and Nancy wait hardly longer than a moment before following. Steve already has the radio in hand. _“Sentinel_ to base. _Sentinel_ to base. Are we coming in, base?”

To his relief, Robin replies “Loud and clear, _Sentinel._ _Bonnie and Clyde_?”

“_Bonnie and Clyde_,” Nancy breaths out, one hand braced on the gun at her waist. “Coming in clear.”

“This is _New Kids_,” Mike says. “Radio checks are every five minutes, no exceptions. Can we-?”

Suddenly, Robin whispers _“Cinephile_ to all comms. There’s-there’s someone else in here with us.”

Urgently, Lucas asks, “Is it a Demogorgon?”

“No, it's on the wrong side of-” Robin’s feed cuts off with a sharp gasp.

Steve panics. “Rob?! ROBIN?!”

A voice he’s never heard roars through the radio, deep and clear. “_YOU ARE ALL GROUNDED_.”

Jonathan gasps, both relieved and afraid, leaning weakly against Nancy. “Mom, we’re-”

“_Jesus Christ_,” Sindri murmurs. “Joyce, they’re already inside of it.”

Joyce snatches the radio from her own daemon. “I don’t want to hear another word except ‘yes, Mom’, Jonathan Byers. You get out of there, _RIGHT THIS GODDAMN SECOND_. Eleven looks…”

Her voice fades. In her maternal fear and rage, Joyce apparently hadn’t noticed that the young lady keeping the gate open was not actually her surrogate daughter. “Eleven?” she says, soft and wounded. “_Baby_…El…”

She speaks to the radio in Steve’s hand. “I’m really alright, Joyce. I promise.” Glancing at Steve, she adds, “I promise on my dad.”

“What’s going on?” Dustin whisper-shouts. “I don’t understand what’s happening.”

In the middle of the adults, El has become a statue, frozen solid where she stands, her ears completely deaf to everything else. On the other side of the portal, Brigantia suddenly lets out a very loud, very human wail. She seems to be laughing and sobbing at the same time.

Her beautiful chocolate fur is dirty, covered in the gray-black blood of the creatures who make their home in the Upside Down. She looks worn out and exhausted. She looks like the most beautiful thing Eleven has even seen in her short and very limited life. The scream she lets out seems to shatter the air in both worlds. “_ANNE-DEE_!”

She goes tearing through the trees, with the adults in hot pursuit when Max, abrupt and vulnerable, says “Steve?”

He pauses and Nancy stops with him, letting Jonathan go with Eleven. She isn’t going to leave him standing by himself anywhere in this place, even if it is right beside what’s basically the front door. “Yeah, kid?”

“Can you-can you leave the radio on for a minute? And just...listen?”

Impatient again, Mike says “What are you even-”

“Just shut and listen,” Max snarls. More nicely, she says “Steve, _please_.”

_Raaaahr. Raaaaahr. Raaaahr_.

It’s an odd, almost pathetic-sounding wail that seems familiar, but he can’t quite put his finger on where he’s heard something like it before. It’s sort of hoarse and rough, but the strange, nearly pleading quality to it makes Steve take a hesitate step in the direction of the sound before Nancy catches his wrist and stares at him with huge, terrified huge.

_Raaaaahr. Raaaaaahr. Raaaahr._

Barely daring to move his lips, Steve asks “What the hell is that?”

_Raaaahr. Raaaaaahr. Raaaaahr._

All alone in her bedroom, the sheets are ripping apart in the death grip of Max’s fingers. Beside her, Pal makes a demonic-sounding rumble of distress in sympathy, both with Max and the animal. Softly, as though saying it aloud will destroy it forever, she says “That’s Freyja.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Daemons mentioned here:  
Andraste "Andy" - Hopper's daemon, a Chesapeake Bay retriever. Means 'unconquerable, invincible'.  
Artemis "Artie" - Steve's daemon, a blue merle Australian shepherd. Means 'safe and sound'.  
Brigantia - Eleven's daemon, an adult version of Eleven. Means 'the exalted one', even 'strength, force'.  
Celestis - Nancy's daemon, a snowy owl. Means 'divine, heavenly'.   
Mithra - Robin's daemon, a spectacled flying fox. Means 'oath, contract', even 'friendship'.  
Nanna - Will's daemon, a death's head hawkmoth. Means 'brave, daring'.  
Pallas "Pal"- Max's daemon, a caracal. Means 'to brandish a weapon'.  
Sindri - Joyce's daemon, a diademed sifaka. Means 'sparkling'.  
Valfreyja "Freyja" - Billy's daemon, a cougar. Means 'lady of the slain (in battle)'.  
Zephyr - Erica's daemon, unsettled. Means 'west wind'.


End file.
